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'Stephan Loges brings to his contributions the youthful warmth of his attractively vibrant baritone and his wonderful feeling for line and word … ...'[Stephan Loges] brings to his contributions the youthful warmth of his attractively vibrant baritone and his wonderful feeling for line and word ...» More

Schumann’s songs are among the greatest musical achievements of the nineteeth century, and this is the perfect release with which to mark the composer’s 200th birthday. This marvellous collection comprises Schumann’s complete songs, presented for ...» More

'Excellent performances and recording offer superb advocacy of late songs by Schumann and, even more affecting, by Clara … This, the fourth offer ...'At a time when the multinational labels fill their booklets with gushing hype about the artists, Hyperion's documentation puts all to shame: as in hi ...» More

The poetic analogy unites the advent of spring, where images of stormy weather presage the abiding glories of the season, and the turbulent arrival of the lover – the ‘Freund’ – who storms the heart of the heroine and will remain hers for ever. This is certainly an over-romanticised version of how Robert Schumann arrived in the life of the young Clara (the awakening of romance, certainly on his side, took years; they met, after all, when he was eighteen; she was nine) but the parallels with the storms which preceded their union – Robert’s infatuation with Ernestine von Fricken, the protracted battles with Friedrich Wieck, and so on – are accurate enough. In any case he has introduced his precious pearl to the world in the first song, and now it is her turn to introduce him.

Thus Robert arrives in the cycle as a conquering hero, with all the overtones of priapic strength that such spring songs traditionally imply. The opening music, however, is very much Clara’s, and Robert would have been flattered by the passion and conviction in the writing of it. (He had almost certainly selected the words as suitable for Clara late in 1840 when he first conceived the project.) The marking ‘Sehr schnell’ and the busy sweep of the accompaniment are completely untypical of Schumann’s vocal music. Very little in his lieder recalls the virtuoso demands of his works for solo piano: without emasculating the poetic power of his accompaniments he made a conscious decision to clarify their texture so that pianistic detail enhanced, rather than conflicted with, the words. It took Franz Liszt half his life to learn the same lesson, and he made heavily pruned versions of most of his earlier songs as a result. In Liszt’s case we often miss the original youthful bravura in his second thoughts, but no one would wish the pianism of Papillons or the Etudes symphoniques on the Schumann song-cycles. In this respect Schumann’s simplifying instincts were exactly right. He achieved a Schubertian Innigkeit in his songs which is greater than that achieved by Mendelssohn, a composer scarcely influenced by Schubert at all, and certainly not in his lieder.

In the songs of Clara Schumann, the music of Mendelssohn seems as powerful an influence as that of her husband. This is no surprise as she had had little time to absorb the lessons of 1840 which had changed the lied forever. Admittedly, these developments had taken place under her nose, but they represented a radical new direction, a cross-fertilisation of the musical worlds of Berlin and Vienna. The established Mendelssohn style was clearly more familiar to her. In Er ist gekommen in Sturm und Regen, as in such Mendelssohn songs as Hexenlied and Reiselied, the initial inspiration has been governed by a sheerly pianistic idea – hardly surprising considering that Clara was a pianist above all. The marking is ‘Sehr schnell’ in Common time. Storm music rushes up the stave, as if the successive waves of arpeggios were battering winds. The four-bar introduction, with its impetuous left-hand spread chords and a fragment of a melodic line traced higher and higher in the right hand, gives us some idea of Clara’s formidable technique as well as her temperament. When the vocal line begins it is phrased in breathless snatches; the high placement of the voice for the words ‘mein Herz entgegen’ shows some inexperience in placing difficult vowels in a singable tessitura. The doubling of the vocal line by the piano is also awkward at this speed. In the interlude preceding ‘Wie konnt’ ich ahnen’ the dynamic changes to piano and the semiquavers rustle seductively in a more gently feminine manner. Here, the vocal line is attractively entreating (the yielding downward direction of the phrase implies ‘how on earth could I have been expected to know?’).

For those who have performed Robert Schumann’s accompaniments for many years, playing this music is a curious experience. The layout of some passages is new and unfamiliar, while others betray the husband’s revising hand – in any case, a hand that is more familiar to us. Thus, while the opening music clearly encompasses pianistic patterns by someone other than Schumann, the accompanying figuration at ‘sich einen sollten meinen Wegen?’ seems to have been fashioned by him – and it possibly was. The second of the poet’s strophes is treated as an exact musical repeat of the first. The third verse begins like the others but quickly changes: the passage beginning ‘Nun ist gekommen / Des Frühlings Segen’ is marked ‘Ruhig’ and is both slower and more contained. Here we find another example of something that bears Clara’s thumbprint: the limpid left-hand accompaniment is filled in with arpeggios in broken chords containing stretches of a tenth and sometimes more. This is absolutely untypical of the writing in Schumann’s own songs; he would have found quite another way to keep this passage moving. Presumably what would have seemed laughably easy for Clara when she composed at the keyboard would have been more awkward for her husband working in the same way.

Despite the ‘Ruhig’ marking the music moves to a convincing vocal climax for ‘Denn er bleibt mein auf allen Wegen’, encompassing a high A flat. This is a female version of the triumphantly clinching ‘Sie ist meine, sie ist mein’ in Frühlingsnacht from the Eichendorff Liederkreis. But the last lines of the strophe are now repeated in ceremonial march-like music which seems to be linked to another song of spring later in the programme, the duet Schön ist das Fest des Lenzes. It was perhaps Schumann’s idea to foster a sense of cyclic unity in the music. (Eric Sams has pointed out that the melodies at the beginnings of the first and last songs in this cycle are identical – a fact that lay hidden for many years.) One is also reminded of the triumphant (if ominous) springtime procession in Schubert’s Trockne Blumen from Die schöne Müllerin. Now the rather foursquare wedding march is followed by a gently swirling postlude which lovingly comments on the singer’s joy. In this music we hear the ghosts of the spring storms, but this march which has come in like a lion duly goes out like a lamb. Once again, and even in this gentle mood, the tricky piano writing with its awkward little-finger repeats suggests the nonchalance of a practising virtuoso. It is clear that such individualistic details must have delighted Schumann, and we can guess this mainly because he allowed them to stand.

This poem was also set by Robert Franz under the title of Er ist gekommen (Op 4 No 7, 1845). That song is marked ‘Allegro agitato’ and the melody is in a throbbing 6/8. It is likely that Franz had seen Clara’s setting first.

These words will be known to lieder enthusiasts through the setting of Gustav Mahler, one of that composer’s most successful and heartfelt songs, and one which had special significance for his tortured relationship with his wife Alma. The text implies a female singer (although a certain type of man might urge his girlfriend to love a mermaid out of sheer curiosity) and male singers regularly opt out of this lyric, reducing Mahler’s Fünf Rückert Lieder to four in number. It is no surprise that Schumann also alighted on these words and judged them suitable for Clara. They speak of the values of true love as traditionally understood by a women; superficial good looks, youth and wealth are less important, says the poem, than the commitment engendered by love for its own sake. Many a man, particularly if young, feels uncomfortable with these very grown-up ideas; he is perhaps more used to having such concepts thrown at him in reproof than to espousing them himself. (Not of course Schumann who was a romantic idealist in his Eusebius incarnation.) On the other hand, to consign such a text to female singers, particularly in the twenty-first century, assumes that good looks, youth, not to mention money, are not also appealing to women. So much for political correctness. The lyrics were well matched to Clara who proved herself a devoted wife, and one who believed these words to be perfectly true.

The tone of this gently appealing music belongs to the drawing-room. It is as shy and diffident as Er ist gekommen was bold and thrusting, and it teeters dangerously on the borders of sentimentality. (Mahler, in his setting, ignores this danger and survives triumphantly, as only he can.) Clara’s song as a whole is neither very harmonically adventurous, nor very demanding to sing or play. In fact it would have appealed to the average audience member of 1841 a great deal better than most of Robert’s own work. On the other hand it is also a good deal more accomplished than most of the lieder published by Schumann’s song-composing contemporaries.

The vamp-till-ready introduction, the accompaniment suavely rocking between tonic and dominant, sets the tone for a work of which the innocent ear would be hard put to guess the origin; one would certainly think of Felix Mendelssohn before Robert Schumann. Strangely enough, it also has many of the marks of the English ballad, a genre quite different from the narrative form which the Germans understand by that name. Taking the perfumed, wafting introduction into account, a sumptuous swoon of tenths and sevenths in the creamy key of D flat major, as well as the meandering postlude which plays at chromatic side-stepping with wilting languor, I would have been tempted to ascribe this song, hopelessly anachronistically, to Roger Quilter. This comparison with a twentieth-century composer (albeit old-fashioned and more fin-de-siècle than avant-garde) immediately exonerates Clara of all charges of being behind the times; indeed, she seems rather more fascinated by chromatic harmonies than Schumann himself, and it is her clear enjoyment in these which tricks one into believing that it was composed later than 1841. By 1890 these heart-tugging oscillations had become salon commonplaces, but this is hardly Clara’s fault.

Why is it that Quilter, and a whole school of English song, comes to mind? Probably because Liebst du um Schönheit shares with some songs by that composer a certain elegant, yet rather effete, lyricism; energy and passion are replaced, in musical terms, by the pastel beauties of an English country garden. Such garlands of domesticated decorum, however, are not to be sneezed at, and were highly valued in nineteenth-century Germany. There is a poignancy to Quilter which partially derives from renunciation and understatement; we are also reminded that Victorianism has much to do with German culture, and that the Schumanns’ friend Mendelssohn was a great favourite in England. As in many songs which reflect the manners of a bygone age (for example, those works of Schubert which seem particularly Biedermeier-influenced) an unfashionable emotional tone should not prevent the listener from enjoying the composer’s skill. Liebst du um Schönheit is not without touches of inventive distinction: the shape of the melody is curiously (yet appropriately) reminiscent of Ich kann’s nicht fassen, nicht glauben from Frauenliebe und -leben; at ‘Liebe die Sonne’ (and again at mention of the mermaid at ‘Liebe die Meerfrau’) the imagery of cascading golden hair prompts luxurious banks of thirds in both hands of the accompaniment which descend the stave like thick tresses or ropes of pearls being let down from Rapunzel’s window. The construction is essentially modified strophic. For the last verse (the crucial ‘Liebst du um Liebe’) the tempo quickens and the tone of delivery becomes rather more vehement with repetitions of the text in descending sequences. The elongated setting, within a ritardando, of ‘lieb’ ich immerdar’ is expressive of eternal togetherness, and the postlude muses nicely on such hopes. As in some of her other songs which survive in their original drafts, perhaps Clara’s original thoughts were less smooth before Robert began to change them. The music is as highly polished as a pretty pearl, but it somehow lacks the grit of real life.

If you love for beauty, oh, do not love me! Love the sun, it has hair of gold! If you love for youth, oh, do not love me! Love the spring, which is young again every year! If you love for treasures, oh, do not love me! Love the mermaid, she has many a bright pearl. If you love for love, oh yes, do love me! Love me for ever, I love you evermore!

And so Clara makes a reappearance at last; nothing has been heard from her (officially at least, whatever theories there may be about her shared authorship of the duets) since the fourth song in this cycle. In some ways this is her most successful contribution to Op 37. Perhaps the poem is more ‘her’. It avoids the unnecessary pianistic grandiloquence of Er ist gekommen in Sturm und Regen, and it strikes a less sugary note than Liebst du um Schönheit; it also seems truer because less self-consciously pathetic. There is much, however, which shows the same composing hand as that of the latter song: chief among these are the same softness of texture (as blemish-free as the smoothest and pinkest of skin) and a similar luxuriousness to the gentle undulations in A flat major as there had been in Liebst du um Schönheit – a song in D flat major. There is something about all these uxorial flats which suggest high heels. Despite (or perhaps because of) the well-turned melodic felicities, thoughts of the Victorian parlour will not go away. If we have been impatient with some of Robert Schumann’s weaker efforts in this cycle, comparisons with his wife’s work make one realise his strengths even when below his best: we never feel that even his worst songs, as strange and stiff as some of them can be, are suitable for a Victorian evening with false moustaches and hired frock-coats.

But that image is also unfair to Warum willst du and’re fragen?. If listened to in the right spirit, this song is saved by a sweetness and directness which suggests that Clara was drawing on her own experiences in the writing of it. One can easily forget that there were many obstacles in the way of those two crossed lovers, and these were not all to do with the father’s opposition to the match. During their long courtship, Clara was aware that Robert was attracted to other women, and he was similarly very aware that she had other suitors. So something similar to the emotions inspiring this poem may have arisen during this period. In fact various letters between them confirm numbers of corrected misunderstandings and soothed insecurities. This song gives musical voice to the sort of reassurance where a smile and glance from the beloved are far more potent than the malicious gossip of others. And in this music, loving without being too cloying, firm without being vehement, we fancy we hear the steadfast voice of Clara herself, always good, always reliable, always devoted.

The prelude announces the song’s main melody, together with a rather conventional cadence leading to the voice part. Thereafter the piano doubles the singer’s line throughout which leads to the main charge to be levelled against this music – that it would have been just as effective as a solo piano piece as a song; indeed, one cannot really see a moment (apart from the downward vocal portamento at ‘Augen hier!’) where one really needs the voice. It would have done almost as well to have a reading of the poem followed by the accompanist playing this music as if it were an impromptu reflection on the words, full of sighs and little dying falls, and a measure of bemused exasperation – ‘how could you even think that I didn’t love you best?’. Clara had often enough played Lieder ohne Worte by Mendelssohn. One also thinks of the beautiful A major Intermezzo Op 118 No 2 by Brahms; that work is also Andante, also in 3/4, also initiated by two quavers in upbeat, and also incredibly soulful. Written for Clara towards the end of her life, this solo piano piece seems similarly consoling, and is in fact a song without words. Some of these late works by Brahms suggest that feelings lie too deep for any poet’s texts.

In Warum willst du and’re fragen? Clara has written a Song without Words (with Words). It underlines beyond doubt that she was a wonderful musician with a melodic gift; but it also shows that the illumination of word-to-music relationships is what defines the great song composer. Very few people in history have had this gift in the fullest measure, and it so happens that Clara’s husband was one of the few. That she herself knew the difference between their talents in this area is a sign of her musical perspicacity rather than a self-punishing lack of confidence. In her song we have a reflection of the mood of Rückert’s poem – it might have been entitled Consolation: on hearing a poem of Rückert. There have been many composers literary enough to be moved to music by a text, but setting it to music and bringing individual verbal images to life is something quite different. As we have seen in the commentaries about this opus number alone, Schumann himself was not able to do this himself all the time. And as we shall see as this series progresses, Clara was capable of it some of the time. At least in Warum willst du and’re fragen? there is nothing jarring, nothing forced; this is music that is attractively easy to listen to, and if it lacks detailed psychological depths it successfully conveys a mood of concerned affection and lyricism; a favourite moment is the rising chromatic phrase ‘als was dir sagen diese beiden Augen hier’ where the push forward to the cadence suggests the radiance of a loving glance. But it is only in this portamento-employing phrase where Clara has remembered that the singer has to carry the emotion at least as much as the pianist.